The skinny on the FAMOUS series

Happy book deal news! (TINY book deal news…sorry so small! Click to enlarge!)

So, if you saw the announcement of my recent sale to Riptide, you might be interested in the longer version of the story, which is also, functionally, an update on my 2017 publishing schedule. Many of you know bits and pieces of this, but here’s the full story.

I’m super excited to announce the FAMOUS books!

In May 2017 (exact date TBA), I’ll be independently publishing book 1, FAMOUS, a m/f novel about a mega-famous pop star having an existential crisis who bolts from her manager and ends up hiding out with a nerdy art history professor in a small Iowa college town. (Could Totally Happen.)

On November 28, 2017, Riptide will publish book 2, INFAMOUS, a m/m novel about a bad-boy rock star and a workaholic doctor who both have really good reasons to stay away from each other (we all know how that’s gonna end, yes?).

Each book is a true standalone—there are no overlapping characters—operating at the intersection of romance and fame. For now, there are only two books in this series, but I hope to expand it (boy band reunion on a cruise ship, anyone?). I just need to figure out how to manipulate space and time to make this happen.

This series is mixed in two ways. First, it mixes m/f romance and m/m romance. If you’re familiar with my 49th Floor series from Entangled, you’ll know that I like my romance to reflect real life—because internationally famous pop stars hiding out in small Iowa towns are a dime a dozen. Ha. No, because, you know, there are lots of different kinds of people in the world, and they all deserve implausible brush-with-fame happily ever afters.

But this is also a mixed traditionally- and independently-pubbed series. I have to give major, major props to Riptide for being cool with publishing a book that’s part of a series that includes books they aren’t publishing. A lot of series end up being mixed trad- and indie-pubbed when a publisher drops an author, or when a trad publisher and an author agree on something like a free novella, but this one is planned from the outset as a joint endeavour, and I’m really proud of and excited by that prospect. Because I enjoy irritating people with businessspeak jargon, I’m going to call this a “win-win.” I think by doing it this way, the series will reach more readers.

(I would also be remiss if I didn’t stop here and give a shout-out to my agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan, who did not blink an eye when I said, “Hey, I want to do a series that’s part indie and part traditional and then went out and thought about all the stuff I hadn’t like, oh, for example, how the hell to handle the subrights.)

So, there you go! That’s my 2017 schedule. In 2018, I have three books coming out from Grand Central Forever and one other standalone from Riptide as part of their Queering the Classics series. Those deals were announced quite a while ago, but now that the books are actually in production, I’ll do a little 2018 update post soon—stay tuned!

Thank you! I’m so glad you liked it! In theory, Colin is up next (I say “in theory” because I have books with other publishers in line first!) Cranky Colin is going to find himself rather flummoxed by the band’s new manager, who is a relentless optimist known for managing the kind of mainstream pop stars Colin disdains 😉